in the next half hour, we'll talk about the prospect for a fiscal cliff deal with california's democratic congressman xavier becerra. >>> the rain and flooding are relentless in northern california. four storms in less than a week left at least one death now attributed to those storms. and more rain is expected today. let's get right to meteorologist rob marciano. he is following it all from the cnn weather center in atlanta. good morning. >> good morning, zoraida. this is the worst stretch of storms that northern california has seen really in about two years. another punch today then we'll set up for a dry trend. the good news is that it has been dry so the ground, even though we've seen a lot of major flooding, the ground has absorbed a fair amount of it. seattle to portland, rain right now. snow at the highest elevations, and the rain will eventually push down into san francisco and sacramento later on today. this system is actually messing up the atmosphere and creating a lot of warmth across much of the country. if you live anywhere east of the rockies, actually anywhere east of the